e offers of Frederick II. in 1752 to go to Berlin as
President of the Academy, and of Catherine II. to undertake, at what was
then an enormous salary, the education of the Grand Duke Paul, have been
variously taken as evidence of his disinterestedness, and of his shrewd
dislike to possibly false positions, and the chance of such experiences
as those of Voltaire. In his later life he and Mademoiselle de
Lespinasse, as has been mentioned, kept house together. He died shortly
before Diderot, in 1783. Perhaps his best literary works are his already
mentioned Academic _Eloges_, or obituaries on important men of letters
and science. D'Alembert contributed to the movement exactness of thought
and precision of style, but his influence was more purely intellectual
than that of any other member of the _philosophe_ group.

[Sidenote: Rousseau.]

The connection of Rousseau with the Encyclopaedia itself was brief and
not important. Yet it is here that his personal and general literary
character and achievements may be most conveniently treated. Jean
Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva, on the 28th of June, 1712, of a
family which had emigrated from France during the religious troubles.
His father was a watchmaker, his mother died when he was very young. His
education was not exactly neglected, but he went to no regular school,
which, considering his peculiarities, was perhaps a misfortune. After
being introduced to the law and to engraving, in both cases with ill
success, he ran away and practically continued a vagabond to the end of
his life. He served as a footman, was an inmate of a kind of
proselytising almshouse at Turin, and went through many odd adventures,
for which there is the dubious authority of his strange _Confessions_.
When he was just of age, he was taken in by Madame de Warens, a Savoyard
lady of birth and position, who had before been kind to him. With her he
lived for some time, chiefly at Les Charmettes, near Chambery. But being
superseded in her good graces, he went to Lyons, where he lived by
teaching. Thence he went to Paris, having little to depend on but an
imperfect knowledge of music. In 1741 he was attached to the French
Embassy at Venice under M. de Montaigu, but (as he did all through his
life) he quarrelled in some way with his patron, and returned to Paris.
Here he became intimate with Diderot, Grimm, and all the _philosophe_
circle, especially with Madame d'Epinay. She established him in a
cottage c